Stemming the rising tide of shoplifting

Thursday

Jun 6, 2013 at 3:15 AM

Shoplifting, in one form of another, has been around for as long as there have been shops, and down through the years there have been various ways of trying to contain it. Through the 1700s, under the Shoplifting Act in Britain, judges meted out stiff penalties, which included public hangings or the slightly less severe transportations to Botany Bay in Australia. The last British execution for shoplifting, it is recorded, was in 1822, after which things softened up a tad.

In the 1960s, the American hippie culture spawned “activists” like Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, whose radical philosophies appeared to condone, if not encourage shoplifting, by asserting that “shoplifting gets you high” or penning titles like “Steal this Book.” It is even claimed that Hoffman stole the idea for his book, so we don’t recommend looking for moral guidance in that squalid quarter.

Theft, at local level, surged a few years back when the price of gas took off, due, in part, to commodity speculators and phoney shortages. Drive-offs, as they were called, were becoming increasingly frequent in the Rochester area, and hurt local gas station owners, who are the people in the gas supply chain who make the least money. This ushered in the practice of Pay before you Pump, which has largely stymied petty criminals on that front.

Cigarettes, too, became a target of thieves, until shopkeepers moved them to the relative safety of the cash register area. Dashing off into the night with a case of beer, however, still occurs, although not with the same frequency, it seems, as just a year or two ago. Nowadays, the most popular — if that is the right word — form of stealing is the concealment of items about one’s person in stores. In 2012, according to Rochester Police Department, there was a 34 percent increase in the crime over the previous year, and, judging from this year’s police log, the number of incidences is still rising.

In an attempt to stem the tide, the police department has done a couple of things. In April it launched a free website for retailers that enables them to be aware of people who have shoplifted in other stores, and informs them of the latest trends in stealing. Secondly, the RPD began sending out a series of press releases and photographs of suspects charged with shoplifting, which the Rochester Times has published as space allows — though let it be said that with the spate of arrests, that we cannot quite keep pace.

Public opinion may be split on this practice. There is the innocent-until-proven guilty camp that believes it unfair to tarnish someone not yet convicted by a court, but such is the quality of surveillance and video evidence in big stores, these days, coupled with the testimony of loss prevention personnel and the recovery of the goods themselves, that these cases are generally pretty strong. (Should there ever be an instance though, when a publicized suspect is able to prove their innocence, this newspaper will have no hesitation in giving equal space to announce the news.)

There may also be a modicum of sympathy among a minority of readers for people stealing because they are hungry or their clothes are threadbare. To this we counter — there are food pantries and charity clothing stores in this city that undermine the excuse for such thefts. We would also note that you can’t eat an iPad, which seems to be a popular target.

We know that the publicity following an arrest for willful concealment will have the desired shaming affect on some shoplifters, but there are those for whom arrest has little or no social consequence. As Robert Burns wrote in his Jolly Beggars Cantata:

Life is all a variorum,

We regard not how it goes;

Let them cant about decorum,

Who have character to lose.

Thus, we think the most important impact of publishing the details of shoplifting suspects is one of deterrence, to stop or slow this growing practice from infecting those who do have character to lose.